Nobody's There Read Free Page B

thirties, or even the twenties.
    Six steps led up to a deep, covered front porch that extended across the front of Edna Merkel’s house. Although the day was flooded with sunshine, thick vines of Confederate jasmine twined up the pillars and dripped over the roof, creating a dim, cool cavern.
    Abbie pushed the doorbell and heard it chime off key, but no one came to the door. Impatiently Abbie jabbed the doorbell again.
    Suddenly the dark-stained front door slowly opened an inch. “Get off my porch,” a voice rasped.
    Startled, Abbie jumped back. Then she remembered why she had come and knew that she had to be there. She peered into the darkness behind the open crack in the door but couldn’t see a face she could talk to. “Mrs. Merkel, I’m Abbie Thompson,” she said. “I was sent here by the president of Friend to Friend.”
    â€œI’m going to count to three,” the voice said.
    â€œI’m supposed to telephone you and visit you and drive you to places you want to go and—”
    â€œAnd then I shoot. One … two …”
    Abbie whirled and ran down the steps of the porch.

P anting with fear, Abbie raced as far as the sidewalk.
    â€œWait a minute!” Mrs. Merkel shouted in a voice so strident and raspy that Abbie winced. “Did you say you’d drive me where I want to go? Like at two o’clock today?”
    Abbie turned back, shakily retracing a few steps toward the house.
    â€œWell? Speak up.”
    Framed in the open doorway stood a tall, bony woman with gray hair pulled tightly away from her face and tied at the nape of her neck with a string. She was dressed in an odd combination of an oversized, faded green T-shirt advertising a celebrity golf classic and a lined, flowered chiffonskirt that hung almost to her ankles. Navy blue ankle socks and smudged white tennies completed her outfit. As she waited for an answer, her heavy-lidded, dark eyes cut into Abbie like a pair of lasers. For a moment Abbie could only stare.
    â€œStop gawking. I’m not trying to make the cover of
Vogue
,” Mrs. Merkel said. “And come back here. We can’t just yell at each other.”
    Abbie took a few more steps, then stopped. “I don’t want you to shoot me,” she said.
    Mrs. Merkel shrugged. “Don’t be so quick to believe everything people tell you. I don’t own a gun. I just don’t like to be bothered by people I don’t know, so I scare them away.” Her eyes drilled even deeper. “Come on up here on the porch. You said you’d take me anywhere I wanted to go. Did you mean it, or was that just so much blather?”
    Abbie forced herself to walk to the porch. “I meant it,” she said. She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice as she added, “The judge said I had to.”
    â€œYou
had
to? Well, aren’t you a polite, gracious little thing?” Mrs. Merkel stepped closer and looked Abbie up and down. “Not so little, I guess. I’m five feet eight, and you’re every inch as tall as I am.”
    Abbie could feel herself blushing with embarrassment, and she hated it. She hated this horrible old woman, and she hated the judge and his wife. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then said, “I’m sorry. I meant that I was assignedto the Friend to Friend program.” Without flinching, she looked Mrs. Merkel in the eye. “I threw rocks through the window of a woman’s apartment. I was caught and given this assignment as a condition of probation. That’s the story.”
    â€œI know the story. I know just about everything that goes on around here.” She shook her head. “So they sent you to me, did they?”
    Abbie was startled when Mrs. Merkel bent over, making a strange, cackling noise in her throat. Was she choking? As she moved closer she saw that Mrs. Merkel was laughing.
    â€œI get a lawbreaker and you get me. Fair enough